I’m referring to the headlines around Kirk’s shooting, not general political blatherings.
The WaPo (and I think the NYT too) had the announcement of Kirk’s death and now the suspect in custody as “Trump Says Kirk has died” and “Trump says Charlie Kirk shooting suspect is in custody”.
For some reason I find this REALLY alarming. It’s very Putin/Kim Jong-Un.
Am I off base here?
This was considered journalistic malpractice by the The Los Angeles Times 55 years ago. Now it’s “just reporting the news”.
It would be a lot more disturbing if they just reported the headline uncritically without mentioning who the source is.
Trump did say this, and it is newsworthy that he said this, so that’s what they are reporting.
When papers start reporting Trump’s statements as objective fact, that’s when you should really worry.
Trump saying bullshit isn’t any more newsworthy than the sun coming up in the morning.
Why? That’s what most headlines are, with sources or back up info in the body of the piece.
Trump is not running the investigation, nor should he be. HE did not declare the man dead, and he did not nab the suspect. This is a bright blaze orange flag -again- that he has got his hands in all the pies and is well beyond simply overstepping his bounds.
I’m counting down the days before we see this one:
And that’s a massive problem that has led to papers publishing headlines that later turn out to be completely false.
For example, if it turns out that this new guy they arrested is also not the killer, then headlines reading “Charlie Kirk Killer in Custody” would be factually incorrect, while headlines reading “Charlie Kirk Killer in Custody, Trump Says” would remain accurate - because he did say it, whether or not it is true.
The problem is that if someone published a headline reading, “@Saje guilty of heinous murder”, and three days later the record was corrected to “Insane person accuses @saje of murder they themselves committed”, the damage to your reputation may well have already been done. Newspapers have a moral obligation to minimize that sort of harm, and accurate headlines that don’t make claims that are substantially stronger than the body of the article supports are one way to do that.
I’m surprised that any of this is the least bit controversial.
No, I disagree, though it does depend on context. Reporting on what Trump has said might be perfectly fine, but blaring headlines about a major new development that center only on what a known habitual liar and con man has said about it is indeed journalistic malpractice because it directly promotes disinformation.
Fox News is very adept at this sort of deception. If an event happens that is favourable to the Republican cause, Fox happily reports on it in great detail. If an event happens that is unfavourable to Republicans, Fox will instead report, not on the event, but on what Republican spinmeisters are saying about it. So all that viewers get is news about things that are great for Republicans, and Orwellian spin about how things that might be bad for Republicans are really pretty good news after all.
Nice spin attempt. Not buyin’ it.
Sure, like you said, there are absolutely times where you can use the “________ said” headline to get some real bullshit in front of a lot of eyeballs without staking your rep too much.
In this case, though, there’s an actual active investigation, and Trump is the kind of bloviating idiot who wants to make it all about himself, so it’s hardly surprising he’s releasing info instead of going through proper channels for an FBI investigation. It would be in the public interest for him to behave otherwise, but given his behavior, reporting on the information he releases is in the public interest, but so is identifying its source clearly.
What am I spinning, exactly?
Of course Trump saying that there is someone in custody in connection with the killing of a celebrity Right wing activist is newsworthy and accurate.
The confused shitshow of announcements some incorrect or misleading and who has made them regarding the investigation is in fact an important aspect of the story.
Using myself as an example, I have only a little interest in the fact that this celebrity was murdered per se. My interest is as part of the bigger story about violence as a normalized reaction, the attacks on the CDC, the attacks on representatives, all part of that same story. Kirk is no one above any of them in meaningfulness to me. But in that story the disparate and inflammatory reactions from the top level, and the lack of professionalism in how the Federal systems involved respond, is … of interest.
How could this not be considered newsworthy?
I took it as indicating that they weren’t sure it was true.
Whether they should be reporting on it before they can confirm it is another question.
What’s wrong with “CORONER SAYS KIRK IS DEAD” or “POLICE CHIEF SAYS KIRK IS DEAD”?
I don’t think so. It’s possible to take the headline as a precursor to many that depict The Dear Leader as the font of all wisdom: “Trump Says Economy Booming” or “Trump Says USA Greatest Nation in the World.” Just basic propaganda and lies, presented as “truths” we must all accept Or Else.
But I don’t think this one example is necessarily of that North Korean sort of ilk. (The explanations others have posted seem sufficient. I will say that I was put off by the fact that for an hour or more there weren’t any news reports citing any OTHER source than Trump. So I can see how you got your question.)
So, would it be appropriate to report on what the director of the FBI is saying, instead, then?
Good point, given that the current director of the FBI is an unqualified, incompetent, self-aggrandizing piece of shit that Trump just appointed, primarily because he was a diehard Trump loyalist.
If they’re both saying the same thing, yeah, Kash Patel would be the better source. And if Kash Patel is saying something himself but the FBI is making an official announcement, that official announcement is more reliable still.
The issue would be when Trump says something many hours ahead of more official sources. A functional administration would be very careful about doing that sort of thing, and if they do, it would be a strategic decision. But the Trump Admin obviously does it randomly because Trump will reveal information on a whim because he likes the attention.
It might just be me, but my assumption is that if the news is reporting "“Trump Says Kirk has died” that more or less means the police and coroner have not said that yet.
Right. My understanding was that the first person to announce Kirk’s death was indeed Trump. Presumably everybody waited so that he could be the first to say it.
Therefore the breaking news headlines were the absolutely correct way to handle the news. You can be upset that the local authorities deferred to Trump, but the news people handled it properly.